


Handful of Light

by cherryboy



Category: GOT7
Genre: Angst, Eating Disorders, M/M, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-08 03:06:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14095800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherryboy/pseuds/cherryboy
Summary: Jinyoung can't wait to waste away completely, take up the least space he can before he can just.. fade away.





	Handful of Light

**Author's Note:**

> Not Beta-read. This ficlet is 2 or 3 years old but JJP making feel things again. Edited every time I re-read it for mistakes.

69\. The numbers blink up at Jinyoung, tauntingly. 4 years ago the number was 58. A good number, he thinks.

Jinyoung’s always been skinny, a bony child, all uncomfortable angles paired with soft cheeks. It wasn’t something he’d been proud of- having wrists small enough to wear kid’s watches, t-shirts always loose and angles protruding. It wasn’t something he was proud of, until he realized he was. He liked having boys with warm calloused hands wrap their hands around one thigh, he liked having pretty girls feed him because he was just ‘too skinny’ and best of all he liked feeling small, like something you could protect.

Jinyoung joins JYP and meets Jaebum and he feels the smallest he’s ever felt. Jaebum is ridiculously large even though he isn’t- he’ll pick fights with people twice his size, and the sheer force of his personality looms large, and Jinyoung feels the same thrill talking to Jaebum as he feels at someone grabbing both his wrists in one hand.

Jaebum pushes his head under his shoulder, wraps his arm around Jinyoung’s waist and holds his skinny body trapped with his hands. Jinyoung likes this. Jinyoung loves it, and like all the things Jinyoung loves (his playstation, the stray cat back at home, his dad), it disappears.

JJP fizzles out and they’re put in a new group. Jinyoung’s not the youngest anymore, and the briefing pack has _‘parental figure?’_ scribbled under his name. Jaebum doesn’t have time to even scold Jinyoung anymore, his eyes flat and disappointed every time he acts out.  
Jinyoung has to be an adult now and he’s clumsy at it, roughly patting Yugyeom’s head and babying Bambam. It’s an uncomfortable role, and he feels at sea, awkwardly too young and too old, and he finds himself always looking for someone older, someone bigger to fix it. But no one comes and the only arms around him are his own.

Jinyoung eats ravenously now, while before he didn’t really care for it, when there was a whole world to explore, a whole person who might love him. Now, at midnight, he finds himself in the kitchen, pulling out the kids snacks and eating. And once he’s started he can’t quite stop, and soon he’s out stockpiling his own snacks. But it doesn’t matter as Jinyoung practices their choreo again and again, as if sweat might be a currency that will work where tears don’t.

He thinks of the note under his name- maybe he’ll go for a different approach this time, he thinks. Being cute has worked for him his entire life, but it’s not enough here he decides. What’s needed is something more serious, someone more reliable, someone less needy. It’s clear to see now, for all he loved Jaebum protecting and caring for him, for Jaebum it was a burden, one he got rid of as soon as he could. Jinyoung loving Jaebum was a burden and he wasn’t childish enough to ignore that- he could do this, be someone Jaebum could look at and relieve his burden with. He’s not quite at peace with this idea, the uncomfortable prickling of a love gone stale.

His love for Jaebum has always been light, airy but now it feels like it’s heavy, dragging him down- and the idea that its always been like that for Jaebum tastes like ash in his mouth. He’ll come to terms with it, he thinks, as he munches on a cheese stick. One day.

Perhaps he might even have come to terms with it, if it hadn’t been for Choi Youngjae. Youngjae is small, wide eyed and lost and Jinyoung sighs internally before he pushes through other trainees to fulfil that goddam brief. Jaebum’s beaten him to it though, arm tucked around Youngjae and grinning down at him.  
A jolt goes through Jinyoung when he realizes how small Youngjae is, how soft, something he himself, all angles apart from his puffy cheeks, has never quite managed.

‘There’s a sharpness to you’, Jaebum had once told him after a fight ‘something you can’t hide.’ Jaebum had meant his viciousness sometimes, his need to draw blood once hurt but now, looking at Youngjae, he can’t help thinking that Jaebum could have meant it as something else.

It’s a one off, a one off, he tells the scales in the bathroom. Jaebum doesn’t like small. He doesn’t like vulnerable and he definitely doesn’t like Choi Youngjae. Except he does- he laughs out loud with Youngjae and Youngjae clears the crease between Jaebum’s brows, he wraps his big hands around Youngjae and grins at his giggles.

Jinyoung flips through their new Choi-Youngjae-edition GOT7 debrief. Youngjae is a virgo, loves rainy days and weighs 53kg. Jaebum’s hand squeezes Youngjaes knee through his tight black jeans. Jinyoung pretends to choke on a mars bar to excuse the watering of his eyes. After the stage Jinyoung walks to their shared bathroom and takes off all his clothes. His wrists are still slim but his his arms are chubby, his belly is soft and protruding, and the dimples in his fat unappealing. Jinyoung doesn’t realize he’s crying until he looks at his thighs, fat and wobbly. He catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror, face bloated and puffy.

Hideous. He’s hideous, he steps on the scales and he imagines he can almost see his fat shake.

Jinyoung doesn’t speak much now. He’s afraid. Of attracting attention to himself, eyes on him, seeing how fat he is, how his thighs squish together. Worse, he’s afraid of someone touching him, and brushing against his fat.

Youngjae loses weight, his stomach is now concave under the thin t shirts he wears at home and his face is leaner than ever. Jaebum gets even more protective of him, telling to wrap up warm and tucking him against his chin in the cold. Jinyoung laughs to himself- at the past, deluded fool he was, thinking he had something Jaebum didn’t like when all along he merely disliked Jinyoung himself for being a poor imitation of what he liked. Jinyoung wasn’t good enough, and God, he’s laughing out loud now at how well JJ Project hit that idea particular home. The members are looking at him now yet he can’t quite bring himself to care.

Jinyoung goes to Jaebum and Youngjaes’ room, which in some cruel twist of fate is the only one with a clean full length mirror and digs through their combined mess for a marker. He locks the door and takes his clothes off. He doesn’t cry, filled with an awful sort of determination that makes tears impossible and draws out all his fat, marking his bones. There’s acres of flesh, _fat_ , he thinks, fat around his drawings. He sits on the bed and notices the spread of his thighs on the mattress.

 

* * *

 

Jinyoung’s in the kitchen, (fat, greedy) when he spills something (clumsy, stupid). He walks into the living room, only to his annoyance, find all his worn, comfortable t shirts in the wash. Youngjae, of course, _Youngjae_  perks up and passes him a small t-shirt of his own. Jinyoung smiles strainedly and goes to pull it on.

The fabric is soft and oddly hangs loose over his front but he can see how enormous his arms are. He imagines going out and seeing subtle wrinkles of disgust at his chubby arms and his hands fist in the thin fabric. He steels his jaw and hunts through his laundry basket and finds a shirt that looks the least worn. Going back to hand Youngjae’s shirt back to him, he hesitates ‘It’s kind of loose’ he says. Youngjae, leaning back into Jaebum, innocently cocks his head and says ‘ It’s tight on me!’

He’s confused, confused as how fat, slobby Jinyoung can say that. Jinyoung doesn’t hear the rest- all he hears is white noise as he walks back to the kitchen- he can imagine it all perfectly anyway. It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t like that. Wasn't it? He didn’t mean anything by it.

After all- how could he, Youngjae was sweet and charming naturally, sunny and bright, slim without trying. Showing up Jinyoung’s manufactured vulnerability with a sweet smile ‘You’re not thinner than me’, he hears when he looks at Youngjae at breakfast.  
‘You’re fat and ugly’, he hears when he sees Youngjae’s solo photoshoot.  
‘Unwanted’, he hears when Youngjae declines another portion at lunch.  
Maybe most damningly of all-‘Replacable,’ when Jaebum ruffles Youngjae’s hair and slides his portion to him, concern etched on his forehead.

He hates Got7. He hates them with a venom he had thought he was incapable of feeling for anything apart from himself.

Jinyoung refuses food, holes up in his room and doesn’t clean, and it feels so good, he feels in control. Reliable and safe and adult, everything he’d been trying to feel since he’d been called into JYP’s office and told to retrain. Of course, they all notice, they all worry and they all make it stop. As if they really care, he thinks viscously.  
He plays it off as sickness, his feverish temperament lending credence to that particular lie. So Jinyoung goes back to eating and everyone breathes out a collect sigh of relief that he’s feeling better.

The dorm walls are paper thin so Jinyoung always makes sure to run the tap before he throws up in the toilet. He catches Mark’s worried eyes one night as he’s slipping out of the bathroom and leans his head on his shoulder.  
‘Still feeling sick?’ Mark questions. Jinyoung hums noncommittally- he's never felt this good.

He loses weight quickly, his face becoming more defined and his arms slimmer and it makes it easier to smile, easier to have people look at him. He feels dizzy half the time and ugly the other half, so he throws up more to make the ugly go away.  
Youngjae has soft pouches of fat on his belly and his thighs, but they look adorable, while Jinyoung’s fat hangs heavy and stale. Choi Youngjae is 53kg and Jinyoung is 51. Jaebum’s hand is still wrapped tight around Youngjaes’.

Perhaps it was never about Youngjae or even Jaebum then, because he can’t stop, he can’t stop the only thing he can control. He can’t make people like him, he can’t make anyone love him and he can’t be good enough to be significant, but he can control those numbers.

 

* * *

 

Jaebum’s worried. He’s always worried when it comes to Jinyoung. And when Jinyoung steps out of hair and make up in a tight black jumper and even tighter jeans, he worries at how slight Jinyoung looks, his eyes big and wild, as if a weak breeze could topple him.  
He almost reaches out to test his theory but catches himself, remembering Jinyoung doesn’t like that now. Now, as if JJ Project wasn’t 4 years ago and Jinyoung lost to him after that and him lost for Jinyoung long before that.

But Jinyoung smiles more now, cracks more jokes, meets his eyes more often so Jaebum considers it a trade for whatever Jinyoung’s doing that’s making him look quite so haunted, his eyes so hollow.

Jaebum moves to stand next to him and coughs awkwardly. There’s something about Jinyoung that transforms him back to that awkward boy who first met him. And just like that time, Jinyoung turns to him with a smile and just like that time, Jaebum is helpless to do anything but smile back.

‘Hey,’ he says, ‘I like you like this.’ Jinyoung looks puzzled before Jaebum gestures at his whole being, like this, now. Jinyoung’s happier isn’t he, and Jinyoung’s happiness has always fed into Jaebum’s own. Jinyoung’s eyes widen and he looks like Jaebums just struck him- for one, heart-breaking moment he swears Jinyoung’s going to cry, the big uncontrollable tears he used to cry back when they first debuted.

Then the moment passes and Jinyoung’s smilling back- is that his PR smile or is he happy? Jaebum can’t quite tell when he stopped being able to see, or tell, the difference, and for all Jaebum hopes it means that Jinyoung can be genuinely happy on camera now, he sometimes can’t shake the feeling that there’s nothing under Jinyoung’s pretty smiles anymore.

Jaebum jolts back to reality with Jinyoung’s small hand on his arm- ‘I like this too’ he’s saying. Jaebum’s meant to be sharp, quick to notice things but he’s got a blind spot a mile wide when it comes to Jinyoung, when he’s all Jaebum’d like to see.

Fate is cruel, Jaebum decides, and desperate for something to say, he looks at the time counting down to their stage ‘51’ he says, and grins lopsidedly ‘a terrible number.’


End file.
